The three most important things about a cruise to my wife and I are dining, entertainment and cleanliness. The MSC Seaside gets an F in all three. There were good things about this ship but these three items being so poor make this ship our worst cruise ever(actually our only bad cruise out of 9 total). If you choose to ignore all the bad reviews on this ship and take the Seaside it will probably be your first and last MSC cruise as it is ours.

Dining: We chose second seating 7:15-7:30 and that is what our paperwork from MSC said but when we arrived our room card said 5:15. We spoke with the front desk and they told us to speak with the Maitre d at Ipanema (our assigned dining room). My wife went there and I stayed in the room. About 30 minutes later she came back to the room in tears. She told me that he told her there was no chance of switching dining times and she said “what if we don’t eat at 5:15” and he replied “well than you just don’t eat”. I went down to Ipanema with her at 5:15 and the Maitre d denied saying this, really just calling my wife a liar. We ate every dinner in the buffet on this cruise because of this experience. We did eat a lunch in the dining room on a sea day but the dining room is not open for lunch any other days. The buffet was the smallest, strangest buffet ever. They have two buffets on this ship but there is usually just half of one open. They serve the same stuff every day. At breakfast they have just one kind of sausage and just one king of potato really no variety at all. As you walk around the buffet it just repeats itself. They do have good pizza but the same four kinds every lunch and dinner. It was so terrible and we were so very disappointed. We refused to eat at the specialty dining because of the huge price tag. After all you subsidise the cost of specialty dining with the thousands you pay for a cruise. We have eaten at every specialty dining on every ship we have ever been on and never had to pay hundreds on an a la cart menu.

We ate a few breakfasts in the dining room and the menu never changed. The tables are very close together and it was super loud. We were served coffee but no milk or there was no sugar on our table. My omelet was supposed to come with hash brown potatoes but did not on our first visit, on another day I ordered an omelet again and this time it did come with their version of a hash brown. Some processed junk. Definitely fast food like something you would get from McDonald’s. They never, not once got our meal right.We sat in the café and ordered large cappuccinos. They brought them to us in drinking glasses. We tried to use them but they were burning our hands. We asked the server why and she said they don’t have large mugs and the large size is just for takeout. She brought us paper cups to put over our drinking glasses and told us this usually cost extra. No kidding. I have more to say on dining but I will include it under cleanliness and you are not going to believe this but it is 100% true. Read more